


First Impressions

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Quarians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 10:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13762407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: Tali'Zorah nar Rayya and theNormandySR-1.  An extremely belated Mass Effect Holiday Cheer fic forInyriAscending.





	First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InyriAscending](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InyriAscending/gifts).



> I am so incredibly grateful to Inyri for her patience as I deliver this fic so far past its deadline. She said, "I’m a details and lore person- I love little pieces of backstory, the in-between moments that make characters tick and make them unique. In my own writing I like to explore relationships between characters, but I love stories about exploration and cross-species dynamics and all kinds of crazy world building." And so, I tried to deliver. Hopefully this fic was worth the wait!
> 
> Thanks, as always, to the beautiful LoquaciousQuark for giving this fic the once-over it needed.

The _Normandy_ is _new_.  
  
Big, too, far bigger than the _Honorata_ , though not as big as the _Rayya_ ; though of course she’d been a teenager before she ever left the liveship and saw how big she _really_ was, regardless of how familiar she was with the ship’s inner nooks and crannies.  The _Normandy_ ’s shape is new to her, too; turian design, she’s told, and turians are rarely desperate enough to salvage their ships out to the Migrant Fleet.  She’s used to ships designed for function, boxy and compact and contained, no room for frills on the outside that translate to wasted space on the inside.  Not that the _Normandy_ is frilly, exactly, but her external engines do display a certain flair for the dramatic that one seldom finds among more poverty-stricken vessels.  
  
But most of all, she’s _new_ , fresh off her maiden voyage, paint gleaming, every inch of her protected by shields that have never allowed even the slightest micrometer of space debris to pocket her hull.  Her lovely, seamless hull, not a welded patch in sight, and every external light steady and strong or blinking as designed.  
  
She is beautiful, and the first time Tali'Zorah lays eyes on her she is breathless with—loathing.  
  
It lasts but a second, quickly replaced by a deep and abiding love entwined with envy, but in that second she hates the rest of the galaxy, hates the races that can afford such extravagant luxury in one breath and spit on her people in the next, hates her own people for being too proud to—what? it's not as if anyone would offer anything remotely so precious to them, let alone in charity, but _oh_  she aches as she grips the railing and breathes in the thrice-filtered air and takes it in, unblinking, overwhelmed.  
  
If she and Keenah had had a ship like this, instead of the _Honorata_...  
  
Around her the Citadel docks are bustling, ships coming and going, dockhands and officials arguing, and were she not so accustomed to listening for footsteps beneath a din she would miss the click of a human's boots on the dock as they approach, stopping when they reached her side.  Five-fingered hands rest lightly on the railing next to her three-fingered death grip; and Commander Shepard says, "What do you think?"  
  
She's not sure why the Commander's asking _her_ , of all people, but she says, honestly, "She's beautiful."  
  
The Commander moves her head up and down, the bright lights of the docking bay casting strange shadows on her face, and Tali's not quite sure how to read her yet—or any human, for that matter.  Which is painfully strange because their faces are so _alike_ , but quarians aren't good at expressions, for obvious reasons, even among their own kin.  What little conditioning she'd learned as a child is mostly lost to her now—there are other clues, body language and nuances of tone, but even those are meaningless when applied to an entirely different species.  
  
But there's a tension to her, Tali thinks, probably stemming from the conversation she'd just had with the Ambassador and Captain Anderson that had ended with Commander Shepard being given control of the ship, though she'd argued against it.  Unwanted authority—well, Tali has little experience with anything resembling control of her own life; but unwanted responsibility she understands, and so she says, "She'll serve you well."  
  
The Commander looks at her, mostly out of the corner of her non-luminescent eyes, barely turning her head, and says, "That your professional opinion?"  
  
_Professional_ —she hasn't even completed her Pilgrimage; she stammers, "Well, I can't say for sure without having a look inside, but from the outside she looks very nice, much nicer than anything we have in the Flotilla," which isn't saying much at all, "and I've heard a little about her capabilities—"  
  
"Why don't you head down to Engineering, and have a look for yourself?" the Commander suggests.  "I'm sure Lieutenant Adams would love to give you the grand tour.  I know he'd appreciate someone who actually understands what he's talking about."   
  
The painful knot in Tali's stomach tightens. Technology such as that on the _Normandy_ —what she could learn—it's almost certainly classified—that C-Sec turian would never approve—and the human commander offers it so _freely_ , as if this isn't the most technologically advanced ship in the human fleet.  "Thank you," she says carefully, though she's afraid from the faint smile on the Commander's face that she's doing a poor job of hiding her excitement.  "I would like that very much."  
  
The Commander moves her head up and down again, still smiling, and then taps the railing with one hand and says, "Hopefully you've brought what you need, and if you don't have it, speak to Requisitions.  Vakarian's already made a list of dextro food items; add to it whatever you want.  Council's paying." She does a strange thing, briefly closing one eye with a knowing smile, and says, "We'll launch within the next hour or so.  Welcome to the _Normandy_ , Tali'Zorah."  
  
And then she's gone, and Tali finally relaxes her grip on the railing, drops her hands to her sides and looks up at her new ship—  
  
_vas Normandy_ , and doesn't that sound strange, alien, and she shivers despite her suit's perfect temperature regulation system  
  
—and the sheer anticipation of going aboard her finally outweighs the envy, though now the nerves are back.  Her father would be pleased to learn of this and her mother—oh, what her mother would have given to see such a sight, to get her hands elbow-deep in the ship's systems.  
  
She'll do it for her, if they let her.  She’ll do anything, learn everything, and take it back to the Fleet as an offering; she has nothing to offer for the two quarians she’s gotten killed, but if she can help save the galaxy from the geth—well, it’s a start.  And this ship...  
  
Beneath the guilt and anticipation and envy and love and longing, she’s also— _ready_ ; and this ship is going to take her where she needs to go.

* * *

  
  
The  _Normandy_  is  _empty_.  
  
She is used to too many bodies in too-small spaces, even aboard a ship as large as the  _Rayya_ , accustomed to carefully avoiding contact with those around her even as they're forced unavoidably close together.  One bad jostle could dislodge a hose; an accidental bump into a wall panel or a crate could cause a snag.  Here aboard the  _Normandy_ , she could (and does) run down the passageway with both arms extended and never crash into anyone, especially during the night shift.  It is equally exhilarating and depressing, and she wonders that a ship of this size with a mission of this importance has so few people aboard.  
  
"Well," Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko explains, "we're running on a skeleton crew."  
  
They sit at a table in the mess, he and Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams—and she's still not sure what to call any of them; she's not in their hierarchy of rank, but the custom of calling near-strangers by only their given name, no clan name necessary, still bothers her—eating what they call chow, which doesn't look too different from the dextro protein mush she's in the process of filtering.  
  
"You know, I wondered," Ashley Williams says around a mouthful of food, giving Tali's translator a bit of a fit.  It's an odd, muffled, garbled way of speaking, one she'd never heard before leaving the Flotilla.  It's hard to talk with a mouthful of protein shake.  "Not that I've ever served on a frigate, but the crew did seem...sparse."  
  
"Yeah," Kaidan Alenko says, though he waits to swallow before he says it.  Tali's not sure she's ever watched someone swallow before, at least not since the clean rooms of her childhood.  And quarian throats are a little different from human throats—thicker, and the vocal box doesn't bulge out nearly so much.  On Kaidan Alenko it practically bobs up and down.  Fascinating.  "We've only got enough crew for a shift and a half, or something.  Don't know as much about the ship side of things, but I know we were supposed to pick up one of your platoons on Eden Prime."  
  
"Didn't you know?" Ashley Williams says.  "That's me.  Platoon of one."  
  
Kaidan Alenko smiles, but it seems a bit painful, even to Tali's unpracticed eyes.  "Yeah," he says.  "Must have missed the memo on that one."  
  
A soft  _pong_  notifies Tali that her food is done being purified, and she's busy adjusting her settings as the straw detaches from along the jaw of her visor, but not so busy she doesn't realize Ashley Williams is looking at her and saying, "It's funny because my entire company got burned up by geth."  
  
Ah.  She is not so unfamiliar with facial expressions that at this point she can't recognize a hostile stare when she sees one. She tongues the straw away from her mouth and says carefully, "I didn't know that.  I'm sorry."  
  
"Yeah," Ashley Williams says, her voice still hard, and Tali is beginning to regret venturing up here.  
  
"Easy, Williams," Kaidan Alenko says, his voice neutral.  "It's not like the geth are  _her_  fault."  
  
"Oh," Tali says, startled, and starts again when she realizes she spoke aloud and they're both looking at her, the lieutenant...curious, perhaps? and the gunnery chief still guarded.  "Sorry."  
  
"It's not your fault," Kaidan Alenko says again, more firmly this time.  
  
"No," she says, waving her hands parallel to the table before remembering that it probably doesn’t mean _no_ to the humans, but they seem to get it.  "No, I'm used to it."  
  
"Doesn't make it right," he says, startling her again, although Ashley Williams rolls her eyes at him.  
  
"Well, no," she says, "but usually no one says that."  
  
"The lieutenant," Ashley Williams says, leaning over her plate of chow, "is a softie."  
  
Tali isn't quite sure how rank works in the human marines, hasn't made it there in her reading yet, but she's fairly certain that a lieutenant outranks a gunnery chief by a somewhat significant amount, and in any case she's not sure how such a statement isn't insubordination.  But Kaidan Alenko says, unapologetic and unoffended, "I just believe in judging individuals. And even if I were to judge all quarians by Tali'Zorah here, I have to say, I'd be pretty impressed."  
  
"Creating the geth  _is_  impressive," Ashley Williams points out.  "It's what happened afterwards that caused all the problems."  
  
"What  _did_  happen?" Kaidan Alenko asks, redirecting his attention to her.  His eyes are so...dull—under a helmet, they'd be impossible to track—but in them she recognizes a kindred spark of curiosity she finds encouraging.  
  
"We tried to stop them," she says.  "But we didn't realize how complex the neural network had become. We were too late, and we didn't know their strengths and they knew ours intimately, and our weaknesses too.  And we..." she trails off, realizing anew that she's aboard a military vessel speaking to two soldiers, she who can only hold a pistol steady because her father had insisted and she hated to disappoint him.  But Kaidan Alenko is still looking at her with interest, and Ashley Williams hasn't interjected any snide comments, so she continues, "We're not a warmongering people.  We're wanderers now, and back then we were just technologically inclined.  We couldn't adapt as quickly as the geth, and so they chased us out."  
  
"I thought you were master craftsmen," Ashley Williams says.  "You can make anything out of anything."  
  
"Now we are," Tali says, "but it's easier to create a gun than it is to teach people to shoot it."  
  
"I don't know about that," Ashley Williams says, leaning back in her seat, empty plate in front of her.  "Aim, turn off the safety, fire.  Boom."  
  
Tali bends her elbows in the universal quarian  _don't ask me_  gesture, but neither human seems to recognize it.  Kaidan Alenko leans across the table to take the gunnery chief's plate and stack it atop his own and pauses for a moment mid-lean, his eyebrows furrowing.  "The geth chased you out?"  
  
"Off the homeworld and out of the cluster, yes," she says.  
  
"But not across the galaxy," he says.  "This is the first time they've appeared outside of your old system?"  
  
"In any great numbers, yes," she says.  "If you're asking, ‘have the geth actively tried to destroy us since we left?’ then for the past three hundred years the answer has been no."  
  
The humans exchange a look she doesn't understand.  "Huh," Ashley Williams says, a word the translator doesn't catch but one that sounds still guarded but less downright hostile.  "And we don't know why they decided to come out  _now_?"  
  
"Whatever Saren told them convinced them," she says, elbowing again.  The line between Kaidan Alenko's eyebrows deepens; humans really don't do the elbows.  She files this away.  "I don't know what he said, but I'm here to find out."  
  
"And we're glad to have you," Kaidan Alenko says, smiling at her.  
  
The smile goes a bit tight, and there's a slight scrape of a chair on the deck as if someone has kicked someone else's chair to move it—or maybe their leg—and in any case Ashley Williams says, "Yeah, that."  
  
"As you noticed, we need all the hands we can get," Kaidan Alenko says.  
  
"I don't know," Ashley Williams says as he stands up.  "I think the Commander prefers it this way.  Gives her an excuse to stay with the ground team."  
  
Kaidan Alenko chuckles.  “One of the few perks,” he says.  “Almost makes up for having to pull double-duty.”  
  
“You’re not bummed about losing out on command?” Ashley Williams asks, settling her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands, looking up at him intently.  Tali feels suddenly and strongly forgotten.  
  
He picks up the plates and lifts his shoulders and then drops them.  “I’ve done my time.  This was just going to be extra padding on the resume.  Besides, part of being a good soldier is knowing when you’re in the presence of your betters,” he says, one corner of his lips tugging upward in a smile.  “The Commander’s one of the best.  It’s an honor to serve under her.”  
  
“Careful,” Ashley Williams says, still resting her chin on her hands, but something about her—eyes, strange little smile, slight tilt of her head—implies mischief, and if even Tali can pick that up then it must be like a flashing beacon to the other human.  “If she hears you saying that, you might make her blush.”  
  
Kaidan Alenko gives her a look that Tali has absolutely no context for—what in space is _blush_?—and shakes his head and leaves without saying anything else.  Ashley Williams laughs quietly, watching him go, and then pushes away from the table and stands up and catches sight of Tali again.  But she doesn’t say anything else either, just lifts her chin in some sort of farewell and wanders away, leaving Tali with nothing but cautious optimism—if the lieutenant likes her, maybe there’s a chance the others will too—and a half-extruded straw waiting to bring protein mush to her mouth.  
  
She’s less optimistic about that, but she needs to eat; so she settles back in her chair, tongues the straw back to her mouth, and opens her omni-tool.  If she watches enough vids, maybe she can ignore the fact that there’s no one else in the mess.  Being the only quarian aboard is bad enough; being totally alone on a ship feels a little like death.  A skeleton crew, the lieutenant had said.  Just a turn of phrase; she hopes that doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.  
  
For now, she’ll eat her mush.  And keep learning, and survive.

* * *

 

The _Normandy_  is _plain_.  
  
Even with so few people aboard—with so much _space_ —the entire ship is impersonal, sleep pods rotating between whomever's available, battle stations occupied according to shift, people's belongings hidden away in lockers.  The CO and XO are the only ones with personal quarters; everyone else makes do with the communal spaces or else claims a patch of the storage bay for themselves, but there's never really anything to _mark_  it.   
  
At first, it reminds her far too much of stowing away, huddling behind stacks of nameless faceless crates while nameless faceless strangers walk the deck above, caring only about eking every credit they can out of the journey.  Everything is metal, or uncomfortably functional upholstery, and various shades of grey.  Part of it too is the _newness_ of everything, no subtle wear and tear, no _character_.  And while it’s nice not to have to worry about vital systems shutting down on a moment’s notice, Tali misses the dingy passageways of the _Rayya_ , misses the names scratched into the peeling paint, the flickering lights, misses the living quarters most of all.  What good is being able to stretch out in all directions if she has nowhere to call her own?  
  
Engineer Adams _does_ like having her aboard, likes talking almost as much as she does, and gives her a dedicated station near the drive core with its flashing lights and constant hum.  But it’s still too plain, and finally she gathers up her courage and puts in a requisition— _never mind the cost_ , Commander Shepard says, _the Council’s paying_ —and the next time they pull away from the Citadel she has a veritable nest of quilts for her corner.  She’s careful to hang them without damaging the bulkhead or obscuring any important readouts, and finally she has _color_ , reds and yellows and blues and a few violets the humans can’t see, and a couple of the patterns are actually quarian designs, and she’s—happy.  
  
A few of the crew members raise their eyebrows—skepticism, she’s learning, or maybe disapproval, or maybe just bewilderment—but when Commander Shepard sees them she just nods (affirmation, or approval) and says, “Glad you’re settling in all right.”  
  
“I am,” she says, almost surprising herself with her honesty.  “Thank you, Commander.”  
  
Commander Shepard waves her hand.  “You can call me Shepard,” she says, and Tali’s fingers flex in nervous surprise.  “You’re not under my command.”  
  
“But it’s your ship,” Tali says, fingers curling into her palms.  
  
Comm—Shepard gives her a look, narrowed eyes and small smile, and says, “It’s fine.  What, do your people always call everyone by their title?”  
  
She patiently listens as Tali explains herself.  She’s always willing to listen to Tali talk about the Flotilla, and seems genuinely interested when she does, and bringing those pieces of home to life in her memory helps, too.  
  
And she’s learning so much, about the geth, about how to handle a shotgun, about humans, about _planets_ —about real dirt under her boots, and how the stars look filtered through an atmosphere, and _sunsets_ , keelah, and trees and grass and clouds and oh, lakes, water stretching farther than the eye can see.  Words she's read in stories, words she has to think about, to find in the recesses of her memory so that she can tell the rest of the squad where she is, what she's seeing; words the rest of them take for granted.  
  
So many worlds and so many colors ( _keelah_ , who knew dust could be so beautiful?), and surely, _surely_  one of them could shelter her people.  There are so many—she'd known that, of course, but her focus has always been on _things_ , machinery and code, she and her mother keeping the ships running while her father searched for the key to their house on the homeworld.  She's only ever considered the two options—ships and homeworld—and now she wonders if her father's right, or maybe if he's wrong, because surely, _surely_ , amidst all this beauty, there's a place—  
  
but it wouldn't be Rannoch  
  
—but the _Normandy_  isn't the _Rayya_ , and quarians know how to adapt, to scavenge, to piece together something salvaged into something livable, into something like home.  
  
She sits in her nest of quilts after a long mission and leans her helmet against the bulkhead and closes her eyes, though the flash of the drive core is bright enough that she still has the impression of its pulsating light, and that’s comforting, too.  The planet they’d been surveying hadn’t been much more than a rock floating through space, a thin atmosphere and no real life to speak of, and the view of the stars had been very like that of the view through any port on any ship: vast and brilliant and endless, and she remembers when all planets had seemed that way, little more than pinpricks of possibility glimpsed at a distance.  But there’s something different about seeing them with firm ground under her feet, and in place of the anticipatory optimism she’d felt at the beginning of her Pilgrimage has come a hollow sort of yearning, a bitter knowledge that _something like_ home isn’t _home_ at all; and she wonders if this is how her father felt on _his_ Pilgrimage, if he came back to the Fleet settled on having _home_ and nothing less from the same feeling of deprivation.  
  
It will consume her too, if she allows it; she is, after all, her father’s daughter.  The hope of the Fleet, if not in so many words.  She can’t go back and offer a new homeworld as her gift.  She must do her duty, _keelah se’lai_.  
  
But there are so _many_ other worlds to see first, and from the safety of her nest of quarian quilts aboard a human ship flying through Council space, she allows herself to dream.

* * *

  
The _Normandy_  has rules.  
  
Every ship, every fleet does, of course, and she familiarizes herself with the Systems Alliance regulations first, mostly because they're shorter and much less complicated than the Council ones.  Simpler than the Migrant Fleet's, too, though she suspects that's only because the humans have had so little time to piece them together.  Many make reference to old Earth maritime laws she doesn't know, which sends her down a dropped-code chase into reading about the human homeworld, which only leads to _more_  questions.  Half the crew isn't even from Earth, but she finally corners Lieutenant Alenko—the humans aboard the _Normandy_ tend towards rank and surname, so she adopts this too—who is as happy to talk about his home as she is about hers.  He knows all the regulations, too, inside and out (better than anyone else on the ship, Chief Williams teases, and he shrugs and says someone has to but Tali thinks he's embarrassed), and explains the more obscure ones to her.  
  
"We can't be _that_  specific about locker sizes," she says, leaning against his work station, though it fails to provide the comforting tremors of the Fleet.  "Our ships are too piecemeal."  
  
"But you probably have far more protocols for dealing with ship damage," he points out, swiping through the reg book on his omni-tool.  "We just have varying levels of 'abandon ship.'"  He pauses when he finds what he's looking for and adds, "Though I think that's because we haven't dealt with much ship-to-ship combat since the First Contact War."  
  
"And your ships are all too new to be breaking down," Tali says, the old bitterness rising in her throat.  
  
"Yeah," he says, giving her a curious look; she wonders what he hears in her voice.  "So, this one's my favorite.  SA-R 30-22 paragraph 3-24(d):  The rations allotted to biotic servicemembers must meet the nutritional standards of rations assigned to non-biotic servicemembers as per SA-R 40-25 paragraph 2-3.”  
  
"Rations," Tali says.  
  
"In the early days, when they were just starting to figure out how much we biotics eat, there was a case where a stingy commander who'd blown his budget was trying to feed his biotic marine potato peels and calling it a meal," he says.  "Ended up accidentally starving him to the point where he couldn't handle his L2 any more and warped a hole in the hanger.  Luckily they were groundside when it happened, but there was a whole stink about it.  Biotic ended up getting a medical discharge, commander got demoted and drummed out, and now if the biotics are eating potato peels, it's only because everyone else is starving, too."  
  
"Our rations regulations alone are probably the size of your reg book," Tali says.  "After the fourth liveship was wiped out by a batarian virus, we endured a two decades of meager rations in order to allow our foodstores to replenish.  We lost more to weak immune systems compromised by malnutrition, but it ended up being better for the Fleet to have fewer people, since we had less food."  
  
The silence that follows is painful.  
  
"My drill sergeant in Basic told me that behind every reg, there's somebody doing something stupid and getting someone else killed," he says.  "Sounds like it's not just a human thing."  
  
"Your people are far more likely to be selfishly stupid," Tali says.  "A quarian might be stupid, but she'd never be so stupid as to do something that would endanger the well-being of the Fleet.  No offense."  
  
"You're probably right," he says.  "What happens if you do something that endangers the Fleet?  Exile?"  
  
She shrugs her shoulders.  The gesture feels unnatural, and she's not quite sure she's using it correctly, but she might as well practice. "If you're lucky.  More likely you'd just be executed."  
  
He swallows this—literally, although by now the sight is not so strange.  "Sounds like old Earth naval justice."  
  
"Our entire people are one big fleet," she says.  "Most days we pretend to democracy, but in the end the captains have absolute authority."  
  
"As it should be," comes Shepard's voice as she emerges from her quarters.  Her uniform is immaculate, although her hair's a little more of a wispy mess; she has a report in one hand and a mug in the other.  "Sounds like a cheerful discussion."  
  
"We're comparing regulations," Tali tells her, and she's too eager as she says it but Shepard's always so _welcoming_ , somehow, even now, when she's only giving them a raised eyebrow.  
  
But then something in her expression—hesitates; where she was going to lean on the work station near Tali, she straightens; but she simply says, "Learning anything new?"  
  
"Always," Lieutenant Alenko says, but something in his voice has—firmed up, gone impersonal and regulated.  She is his commanding officer, after all; and Tali understands hierarchy, and the absolute authority of rank.  But there's a tension that feels unnecessary, and she's not entirely sure why.  It's not dislike, or disrespect; but it's a formality she hasn't seen from either human before, and she suddenly feels like an intruder in a way she hasn’t felt in—weeks.  Which is a nice thing to realize, but less nice to feel again, and so she tries to stretch the hoses, so to speak.  
  
"Some of your commanders can be jerks," she says, and Shepard, startled, laughs, the first real, long laugh Tali thinks she's ever heard from her; and Lieutenant Alenko watches her laugh, expressionless.  
  
"That's the truth," Shepard says, recovering, "if I ever heard it."  
  
This pause is awkward, with the lieutenant staring at the commander who's staring at Tali as if she's trying hard _not_  to stare at the lieutenant while Tali tries not to stare at them both.  
  
"Well," Shepard says finally, waving her mug, "I just came for a refill.  Carry on."  
  
She smiles, tight and strained, and makes her way to the coffee dispenser and then, after another pause, wanders up the stairs.  Tali turns back to see Lieutenant Alenko watching her go with an intensity she can't name and a tension she still doesn't understand.  
  
"Everything...all right?" she asks.  
  
He shakes his head a little and looks at her, and his smile is equally tight.  "Stupid mistakes that get people killed," he says, almost wistful, almost sighing, and for all that she's getting a knack for understanding human voices she's as lost as she was when she started.  "Sorry.  We had to regulate locker sizes because the old standard wasn't big enough to contain the newer heavy armors, and regulating it was the only way to force the government to authorize the funds for retrofitting the fleet."  
  
"I see," she says, though that reasoning strikes her as exceptionally stupid.  Her people have their fair share of politics concerning the hierarchy of ships’ needs, of course, but once a need has been confirmed, they do what it takes to satisfy it.  “Are human politics always so complicated?”  
  
He shrugs, in this case denoting, she thinks, a combination of ignorance and antipathy.  “Mostly.  I try not to pay them much mind when I can.  Not always easy, with all the biotic regulations, but serving in the Alliance is a good way to get around most of those.”  
  
Of course, because the military regulations wouldn’t affect the civilians, and vice versa.  “So you’ve just traded one set of regs for another,” she says.  
  
He blinks his dull eyes as his eyebrows furrow then raise and he gives a slight nod.  “True,” he says, and then he tilts his head, “but at least in the Alliance, the regs mean you know where you stand.  And I can help far more people here than I could twiddling my thumbs back on Earth.”  
  
She considers this.  The good of the Pilgrimage is entirely bound up in coming _back_.  To leave the Flotilla and help by living elsewhere...“I suppose,” she says.  
  
His omni-tool dings.  “Speaking of,” he says, “regs say it’s my turn to sign off on the weapons inventory.  But if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”  
  
She presses her fingertips together, though that doesn’t translate as gratitude so far as she can tell.  “Thank you, Lieutenant Alenko,” she says.  “Appreciated as always.”  
  
He touches his display, turns it off, hesitates, and says, “Call me Kaidan.”  
  
“Is that in your regs as well?” she asks, surprised at the teasing in her voice.  Chief Williams’s casual insubordination must be seeping through her scrubbers.  
  
He laughs, looks a little chagrined, and says, “Technically you’re a civilian, so, no.  And between you and me...”  He hesitates again, looking past her to the stairs, his eyes losing their focus, then sighs.  “If you undermine one, you undermine them all, I guess.”  
  
“I understand,” she says, though she thinks she’s missing something.  
  
He smiles that tight smile again and says, “See you around, Tali,” before stepping past her—always careful not to touch, always so deferential to her suit, as quick and adept at adjusting to new rules as he is at following the ones he’s known for years.  She’s seen quarians chafe under the stricter shipboard regs, especially aboard the Heavy Fleet, and she’s certainly no stranger to wishing things were different; she admires the peace the lieutenant—Kaidan—seems to have made with the life he’s chosen.  
  
Though perhaps it’s easier, when one has a choice.  She wouldn’t know; and she’s not sure she’s doing herself a favor, seeing life on the other side.

* * *

 

The _Normandy_ is...surprising.  
  
She steps off the elevator into the hanger bay.  “Hey, Garrus,” Wrex (always Wrex, no clan name required) calls from his usual spot, “I heard another one.”  
  
“Joy,” Garrus calls back.  She scans the bay and finally spots him perched atop the Mako with what looks like a sanding belt in his hands.  (They’d barely been on the _Normandy_ a day before he told her to “please quit calling me Garrus Vakarian all the time.  It makes me feel like I’m back at boot camp.”  She acquiesced, but his name is still uncomfortable to say; she doesn’t feel as if he likes her enough to justify using his given name alone.)  
  
“How many turians does it take to solve a space hamster infestation?”  
  
Garrus sighs.  “I don’t know,” he says, and turns on the sander.  
  
“None.  They’ll just hire some salarians to do it for them.”  Wrex’s chuckle is low and rumbling and dangerous; he looks legitimately amused, but she’s always wary of her instincts when trying to read his expression, even after all these weeks—months, now.  Garrus’s only reply is to apply the sander to the Mako’s hull.  “What do you think, kid?”  
  
“Oh,” she says, startled.  “Good one.”  
  
“Heh.”  He lifts his chin, beckoning her closer; she hesitates, one foot pointed towards Engineering, and he curls a finger and flicks his wrist, and she steps towards him instead.  
  
“Good,” he says once she reaches him.  “Hey, Williams, you done cleaning it yet?”  
  
Chief Williams looks up from her station.  “Done cleaning what?”  
  
“The gun.”  
  
“Which gun?” she asks, crossing her arms.  “You have so many.”  
  
“You’re just jealous,” he tells her.  “Not my fault your human regs limit your personal shipboard arsenal.”  
  
She snorts.  “The things you don’t learn, being groundside your whole career,” she says.  “You’re just too lazy to check your locker.”  
  
Wrex snorts in return, and Tali feels the floor beneath her feet vibrate.  “Fine,” he says, taking the few steps necessary to reach his locker.  “No presents for you next time I go scrounging in the Wards.”  
  
“Looting comatose bar fight victims, you mean?”  
  
“Hey, you want to join in the fun, you only have to ask,” he says, punching in his code and rummaging through the bulging contents of his locker.  Tali catches a brief, pained look on Chief Williams’s face; the human marine’s equipment is always immaculate, perfectly organized.  Tali’s own locker is efficiently packed but sparse; most of her belongings are back on the _Rayya_ , and she hasn’t picked up much on her travels that would be worth taking to whatever her new ship will be.  The most important thing is her ticket to that ship, a disc she keeps in a pocket three layers deep in her suit, close enough to her skin that she can feel its imprint constantly against her side.  It might be safer aboard the _Normandy_ , but she keeps it close as a promise to herself.  
  
Of course, helping to defeat Saren and the geth might be enough on its own, and if they fail, the Fleet would probably still take her back out of sheer desperation.  But that’s for later; now Wrex has emerged from his locker and is unfolding—  
  
a shotgun, of a make and model she’s entirely unfamiliar with, almost like a Katana but darker, a sight on top it, and suddenly she’s stumbling as he dumps it into her arms— _much_ heavier than the Katana, and before she quite realizes what she’s doing her omni-tool is out and she’s scanning it, her fingers itching to take it apart.  
  
“What is it?” she asks even as her omni-tool begins spitting out statistics and analysis.  
  
“This,” he says, “is what happens when humans get their hands on batarian tech.  Experimental shotgun.  Guy who made it says it’s too heavy for a human, recoil packs too much of a punch, so I traded him a krogan pistol to play with.  Joke’s on him.”  A krogan’s mouth is always smiling, just as his forehead is always scowling.  “The pistol’s worse than this.”  
  
“I see,” she says, switching off her omni-tool and running her hands along it.  Heavy, but not unmanageable, the safety requiring the barest flick of a—thumb, yes, there it is, and she picks it up and checks the sight.  
  
“Good form,” Wrex says.  
  
“You want me to take it apart?” she asks.  “Make sure it works?”  
  
“Already done,” Chief Williams says, arms still folded and eyebrow raised in judgment—but she’s leaning against her station with a casual interest, and her voice is only mild professional pride.  “Looks like he tried to scale it down and just ended up with a giant slug that packs a whole lot of hurt on both ends.”  
  
“You should see our shotguns,” Wrex says.  “This is nothing.”  
  
“You talk a big talk but I’ve yet to see any proof,” Chief Williams shoots back.  “Besides, where are you even making all these guns?  Isn’t your homeworld a pile of slag?”  
  
“Slag and munitions,” Wrex says cheerfully, but it’s the same kind of cheer she remembers from the Fleet, _well, you know, the homeworld’s not_ that _great, geth have really fouled up the place, we’re better off here_.  A lie, or something like it.  “Don’t mind her,” he says, swiveling one eye to look at her.  “She’s just jealous that she couldn’t handle it herself.”  
  
“The recoil’s a bitch,” Chief Williams concedes.  
  
Something clicks.  “You’re giving it to _me_?” she says in disbelief.  
  
“Sure,” Wrex says.  “You quarians are built solid.  Good legs under you, too.  You ought to be able to handle it.  Unless you’re worried it’ll puncture your suit.”  
  
“No!  No, I—”  Her mind is a jumble.  She can’t make sense of his face; his voice is classic Wrex, teasing and serious and scolding and scoffing and concerned and no help at all.  And this is a _serious_ weapon; even just her preliminary report suggests it can do twice the damage of her current gun.  "Um, thank you."  
  
"Good answer," Wrex says.  "I've been watching Shepard teach you, and you've never shied away from a fight."  He reaches for it and she—reluctantly, to her surprise—lets him have it, watches as he hefts it and takes aim in Garrus's direction.  "It'll take some getting used to, but it'll serve you well.  And if it blows up in your face, you got that visor to protect you."  
  
"Thanks, Wrex," she says, and he chuckles again as she takes it from him.  
  
"Is that what you were playing around with on Noveria?"  In her absorption with her new toy she hadn't noticed that Garrus has stopped sanding and is sitting atop the Mako watching them.  "It packs quite a punch.  You're sure she can handle it?"  
  
"I'm sure it'd break you like a twig," Wrex says, and Tali's suddenly nervous.  "But hey, if you want to come fight with the rest of us, you can give it a try.  If Tali says you can."  
  
"No thanks," Garrus says.  "I'll stick to sniping."  
  
"Only because you don't have the quad for a real fight," Wrex says.  "Do turians even have balls?  Don't tell me, there's a joke in there somewhere..."  
  
He gives Tali a terrifying wink, and an unexpected light shove she barely sees coming, barely has time to bend her knees and flatten her feet and absorb the impact.  Her torso wobbles, but her legs stand firm.  
  
"Good girl," Wrex says.  "Now put it away.  Commander doesn't like it when we play target practice at FTL"  
  
She pauses for a moment to consider that terrifying possibility—quarians are only allowed weapons if they are in the marines or have, say, an insistent admiral for a father, and even then they can only practice with them in orbit at one of the few shooting ranges in the Fleet, which are scattered amongst the most derelict ships, the ones where blowing a hole in the hull wouldn't be the worst thing that's ever happened.  Shooting aboard the _Normandy_ —but Wrex wouldn't be alive if he was so foolhardy.  Or maybe he would, give krogan physiology.  
  
She keeps her shudder to herself and steps past the krogan—now engulfed in his omni-tool, presumably researching turian mating habits—to her locker.  She takes out her Katana and turns it over.  A good gun, nicely balanced, dangerous, and destined to be replaced.  Chief Williams says, "Here, I'll take that.  Give it to Reqs over there, see if he can get a good price for it."  
  
Tali hands it over and glances at the human in the far corner, huddled over a computer, his omni-tool glowing fiercely, an earpiece in his ear.  "Does he ever..."  
  
"Stop?  Hell, no," Chief Williams says.  "Besides, he's afraid to talk when Wrex is down here.  Made the mistake of trying to argue that turian weapons are the best on the market."  
  
"And Wrex disagreed."  
  
"So did I, frankly," she says.  "They might have the best military, but they're sticks in the mud.  No innovation.  Give humanity another decade, and we'll surpass them."  
  
Garrus laughs out loud but says nothing, and a moment later the sander is going again.  "And _he's_  just sore I beat him in stripping down and reassembling an Equalizer last week," she says.  "Men."  
  
Tali snorts and then, reluctantly again (she wants to see what it can _do_ ),folds up her new shotgun and places it in her locker.  It's bulkier than the Katana; she'll need to do some rearranging.  
  
"He's right, you know," Chief Williams says, and Tali freezes, her hand poised over her filtration cleaner kit.  "Wrex.  You've picked up a lot."  
  
"Oh," she says, her hand dropping to her side.  "I—"  
  
"Sorry if I wasn't the most welcoming when you got here," she continues.  "Never met a quarian before, and what I'd heard..." She shakes her head and says, "I was stupid and Shepard was right.  So thanks for coming aboard.  You're a good shot."  
  
For the second time in what feels like as many minutes, Tali has no idea what to say.  "Thank—you're...welcome?"  
  
"I'm serious," she says.  "I know what it's like to feel like you have to be the best to make up for how everyone else sees you."  She's quiet, looking at the deck just over Tali's shoulder, and then she shrugs and says, "You've done your people proud.  And you're a really good shot."  
  
"Thank you, Chief Williams," she says, feeling quiet too.  "It means a lot, coming from you."  
  
"You're welcome," she says.  "Call me Ashley."  
  
Her shoulders lift with the unexpected removal of a weight she hadn't realized was still there, and she finds herself nodding—a strange gesture, pulling at the hoses on the back of her helmet, and she knocks her forehead a bit—but Ashley nods back, and the look in her eyes is the same one that Wrex had, that Adams always has, that Kaidan and Shepard have, and even sometimes Liara and Garrus.  The look she'd hoped for, when she'd been nothing more than a too-curious quarian stepping off her Pilgrimage ship for the very first time; the look everyone told her she'd never earn, no matter what she did.  But here she is, aboard the best ship in the galaxy with the best crew, and they look at her with—  
  
_respect_.

* * *

  
  
The _Normandy_  is...human.  
  
Everything is designed with a five-fingered hand in mind, something Garrus complains about as well, and all the available snacks are levo-protein, and the shipboard movie selection when they're traveling at FTL doesn't have a copy of _Fleet and Flotilla_.  Ensign Rahman from Engineering introduces her to a couple of human romances, but she's too distracted by all the touching and most of the humor goes right over her head.  Most quarian romances revolve around the central conflict of "dare we sync our suits?" (or, not her favorite but still popular, "we came back from our Pilgrimages and chose different ships and can't get authorization to switch"); human romances seem to rely more heavily on misunderstandings that would be easily solved if the people involved would just _talk_  to each other.  And also the awkwardness of touching, which Tali doesn't understand either—well, she understands the embarrassment of the unintended collision, but she doesn't understand how humans can simultaneously taking touching all the time for granted and then yet be hesitant about holding hands.  
  
"Well," says Liara (who waves away any attempt to call her “Dr. T’Soni”), sitting next to her in the mess in the middle of night shift as they watch a human vid on Tali's omni-tool, "it is quite...stimulating."  
  
"Asari mate by sharing brains," Tali says.  "You find hand-holding stimulating?"  
  
"There can be a physical aspect too," Liara says, a little defensive. "But I believe human hands are more sensitive.  I know the humans on our dig teams were better at detecting the worn indentations on Prothean artifacts than I was."  
  
Tali considers this.  She'd first learned the basics of salvage and circuitry in a clean room, working barehanded alongside her mother, and even now her suit's gloves are a particularly expensive and rare material designed to be indestructible whilst still thin enough to allow for precision work.  But she can't remember ever touching some _one_  else with her hand, not even her own mother working next to her.  She thinks about the way a nanochip felt against her fingertips, the minute variations of circuitry and nodes; she imagines touching someone's hand, and the imperfections of their skin, and shivers.  
  
She remembers this conversation a few weeks later, when they stop off on a side mission on their way to Virmire and find themselves up against a surprise wall of geth.  It's not a hard fight—she's _really good_  with that shotgun now, less accurate but more _fun_  (and she thinks her mother would have been disturbed to hear her say that, and her father might be proud).  But a colossus gets off a lucky shot that hits the dirt by Shepard's feet and knocks her flat on her back.  
  
Ashley picks it off and so Tali goes to check on the commander, but Kaidan is already there, reading hardsuit vitals even as Shepard's voice wheezes over the in-helmet comms. "I'm fine.  Just winded."  
  
"Nothing broken?"  
  
"Doesn't feel like it," Shepard says, and Tali can hear the wince in her voice.  There's a comfort in these conversations, where they're all on equally face-blind footing, even if the subject matter is harrowing.  "Just need a hand getting up."  
  
Kaidan reaches out a hardsuit-gloved hand and Shepard takes it with her own; he braces himself and pulls as she slowly sits up, then pushes up to her feet.  
  
Neither one lets go.  
  
"You're sure you're all right?" Kaidan says, and Tali's suddenly, forcibly reminded of being aboard the Fleet, of accidentally hearing something said over the suit's speakers instead of over private comms.  On the _Normandy_ , standard protocol is to use helmet-to-helmet comms when helmets are in use, and to change channels as necessary; in the Fleet, it's considered rude to use helmet-to-helmet communication unless absolutely vital.  It keeps the Fleet alive, the sound of everyone's voices echoing in the halls, though it accustoms one to voices that aren't quite organic.  The clarity of helmet-to-helmet speech is one she's not particularly used to; and just now she feels as though she's accidentally stumbled upon someone else's channel.  
  
"No harm, no foul," Shepard answers with that light tone she uses to put others at ease, casual and friendly, but she's still gripping Kaidan's hand.  
  
Ashley clears her throat into the comm; Tali winces, and Kaidan and Shepard immediately release each other.  "Perimeter secured, ma'am.  You're welcome."  
  
"Thanks, Williams," the commander says, as Kaidan rubs the back of his neck.  "Lieutenant, prep the Mako for depature."  
  
"Aye-aye, ma'am," he says, and as he jogs off there's a slight _click_  on Tali's comm indicating a frequency change.  Her comm is set to harmonize with the commander's within a certain proximity, regardless of invitation, and before she can switch back—  
  
"Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"  
  
"Not granted," Shepard says, surprisingly, but Ashley is already talking.  
  
"I knew he had it bad," she says, "but I didn't realize  _you_  had it worse."  
  
"Not granted," Shepard says again.  Her helmet is still pointed towards Kaidan, and every inch of her posture is that of a marine holding an armed weapon with the caution and respect it deserves. But there's a wry resignation in her voice, and—"You know the regs, Williams."  
  
"Ma'am."  Ashley draws herself up just as straight, holds her assault rifle with equal care, but her voice is teasing and laughing, and Shepard's shoulders slump.  On anyone else, the movement would be imperceptible; on Shepard, it makes Tali feel as if the sky is crashing down upon her.  
  
Her father's voice comes to her, unbidden:   _Being a leader means_  sacrifice, _Tali'Zorah.  
  
_ But at what cost?   _No price is too high for the good of the Fleet_.  
  
A good quarians knows this, lives it, barely even notices the loss; and she's always been a good quarian, the perfect daughter, not that it was ever enough.  But in the slight tired slump of Shepard's shoulders—Shepard, who would be the consummate quarian, never hesitating to risk herself for the good of others, never straying from the mission, committed to saving as many lives as she can—she sees something she's always felt, the same wistful wish that she could be selfish, just once—  
  
and is it truly _selfish_ , to want to see her father's face?  
  
—and there, on a planet whose name she didn't even bother learning before they landed, she begins to wonder if, perhaps, she's not a very good quarian, after all.

* * *

 

The _Normandy_  is—  
  
silent.   
  
She's always had an eerie quiet, the kind most ships have when they're dead or dying, the hum of systems straining to eke life out of too little power spread across too many conduits.  Engineer Adams explains it all, and Tali studies the drive core inside and out, _knows_  she's working, _knows_  this is what a ship with too-few people and too-new technology sounds like, but it still wakes her in the middle of the night in a panic, wondering what she's forgotten, and the fact that in the middle of night shift it's easy to wander the ship for a good minute before encountering another person doesn't help.  
  
But there _are_  other people aboard and though the chatter isn't nearly overwhelming enough at least it's _noise_.  But now everyone is quiet, refraining from all but the most necessary conversations, and even those are only a sentence or two at most.  Nothing's been said, officially, outside the briefing room, about what they found on Vimire; but the crew knows, and Shepard—  
  
Shepard looks like a ghost, or at least like a human ghost, like the stories she's read when she's been awake in the middle of the night on what feels like a ghost ship and wondering what a human ghost would look like.  Pale, and speechless, trailing mournfulness in its spectral wake (she hadn't realized that SPECTRE was a pun for humans, wonders at the irony); but determined, too, driven by whatever mission keeps it from a peaceful death.  She is as much a presence in her absence, as well, keeping mostly to her quarters, her evening rounds temporarily abandoned, the crew quietly worrying when she's not there.  
  
Tali sees her in the hanger bay, once—and it all only lasts a few days, the time it takes to travel from Virmire to the Citadel, but it feels like an eternity—standing before the equipment lockers, one hand flat against one of them, the other a fist resting upon it as if she's just punched it, head bowed, her hair coming loose from its ponytail and half-falling in her face.  
  
She pauses; she'd been planning on rearranging her locker, if only for something to do, but she doesn't wish to intrude, and then she realizes _whose_  locker Shepard's standing in front of and she takes two steps forward before she knows what she's doing.  Stupid, she berates herself, as if she can _help_ —  
  
"Tali," Shepard says, and her voice is calm, deadly calm, if rough around the edges.  "That you?"  
  
"Yes," Tali says, wincing and turning down the volume on her vocalizer as she does so, taking another step closer.  "I'm sorry, I—"  
  
"No," Shepard sighs, her hands dropping away from the locker as she straightens.  "You're exactly who I want to see."  
  
"I am?" she says, startled and pleased and immediately guilty.  
  
"Well," she says, and then stops, her eyes searching the ceiling, and she settles on, "yes.  Can you," and she gestures to the locker, "open this?"  
  
Ashley's locker.  
  
"Oh," she says, stepping closer, "I mean, I can try—"  
  
Shepard's talking, and though her tone is matter-of-fact, for the commander it sounds almost like babbling, the most Tali's heard from her in days; and so Tali abandons her explanation and opens her omni-tool, letting the sound wash over her.  "I meant to do this earlier, but the damn Prothean vision knocked me out after talking to that Reaper, and I got down here and I realized I didn't know her code, and of course there's an override access but it's on a file back in my quarters and I delegated memorizing the damn thing to—" a pause, almost a hiccup of silence, but she goes on, "since she was—and Kaidan—" and her voice catches this time and when she continues she's shaky "—he probably knows it but I didn't want to— _damn_."  
  
"It's all right," Tali says, barely even paying attention to which slicing code she's picked, though apparently she's picked well as it's almost done.  
  
"No, it's not that," Shepard says, though _that_  doesn't seem to translate to anything in particular.  "I just didn't want to involve him in breaking into a subordinate's locker, even if he does have...rank and authority..."  
  
"It's all right," Tali says again, reaching past Shepard and popping open the locker.  Everything's there, immaculate and pristine, minus her helmet and her trusty rifle, and Shepard blows out another long sigh when she sees it.  Tali's own throat is tight, but she says, "I didn't have anyone to talk to when my mother died.  I think I talked to a wall."  
  
"What about your father?" Shepard says, sounding as if she's been startled into asking.  
  
Tali can't help laughing, can't escape the bitterness, wonders if she preferred the silence.  "He had to go back to work."  Before Shepard can be sympathetic, she says, "He didn't want to talk.  He didn't want to acknowledge her death at all.  Because he'd failed, and if he talked about her he'd have to admit he'd failed, and he wasn't ready to do that."  She stares at the reflection of the tip of her nose in her visor.  "He still isn't."  
  
"I'm—"  
  
"It wasn't a stupid mistake," she says suddenly, fiercely, and Shepard looks at her and Tali _wishes_  she could— _see_ —but evidently she sees something because she's quiet, waiting for the explanation.  "My mother—she got sick and died.  It was stupid.  It—our whole situation is stupid, and maybe it is our own fault.  This wasn’t your fault.  Ashley wasn't stupid.  It wasn't a mistake."  
  
Shepard's eyes narrow; her skin is white; her whole body is tense. "Who said it was?"  
  
"No one," she says quickly, and now she's worried she's misjudged, said the wrong thing, really ripped her suit on this one; but Shepard doesn't look like she _believes_  her, and so her stupid mouth keeps talking.  "It was just—you made a choice, but it wasn't your _fault_.  You didn't decide to make the choice. Saren and the geth forced it on you.  You—you did your best."  Oh, that's lame, and who does she think she is, trying to console _Commander Shepard_ , who's seen more in a day than Tali's seen in a lifetime?  
  
Shepard's eyes are still narrow but the set of her mouth changes, a little wry, a little incredulous, as if she's asking the same thing.  Tali's never been so glad of her visor in her life; embarrassment covers her like a second skin under her suit.  
  
"You ever get someone killed, Tali'Zorah?"  
  
She sees the _Honorata_ 's navigator, lying in an Illium street; she sees Keenah'Breizh's body going up in flames.  Not her fault.  A choice forced upon her.  "Yes," she says, though the word scrapes against her throat, all the mourning she hasn't done burning in her chest, all the doubt she's been trying to ignore—and she did the right thing; if it weren't for her, they wouldn't have had the proof to even reach this point; but Keenah didn't know that when he died and besides, it had been her idea, not his.  Stupid.   _Not her fault_.  
  
Shepard—deflates, turns away from her and back to the locker.  "Well," she says, "join the club."  She reaches out and touches a box, drops her hand idly—resigned, defeated.  Tali's never seen her—never seen _any_  human, let alone Shepard, so despondent.  She thinks of Wrex and his constant commentary on how soft and squishy humans are, and for the first time she sees it—a quarian could never _droop_  like that.  She thinks of Shepard as steel and the solidity of an unstoppable force; but death is an immovable object, and she can’t do anything to fix it.  
  
"She died for the sake of something larger than herself," she says, but Shepard doesn't move, not even to look at her.  "That...means something."  
  
A long pause, and then—"Something," Shepard agrees, faintly, reaching again and this time closing her hand around the spare ammo box.  "Beats dying because a bunch of batarian slavers thought your house was a good place for a pit stop."  She looks at the box in her hand and says, "I'm sorry.  Thanks for your help."  
  
"You're...welcome," she says slowly, and tries to remember what she was doing so that she can make a graceful exit.  Organizing her locker, right—no, no longer an option.  So she takes two steps backwards, turns around, and walks with what she hopes is purpose to Engineering, though on a ship this size, there's really nowhere to go to escape.  
  
She's used to that, though. She grew up on ships, has spent half her life with her breathing echoing in her ears, the constant hiss of air being sucked in and filtered or recycled so that she can go on breathing.  And there’s nothing like being trapped behind a visor with the faintest shadow of her own reflection constantly before her eyes to remind her that she can’t escape herself.  She knows how to find a corner to wait it out, how to curl up with a quilt around her shoulders like the missing weight of her mother's arms, and sit, and keep her mouth shut, and wait; and if she switches off her speaker and talks to the bulkhead, at least she won’t be bothering anyone else. 

 

* * *

 

The _Normandy_  is triumphant.  
  
She's never been a more beautiful sight than she is soaring past the arms of the Citadel, peppering Sovereign with lasers and bringing the whole Reaper down atop them.  Granted, the chaos of the debris does cause two tiny rips to her suit, and her nose runs for a week, but it's not visible in the victory vids and she and Dr. Chakwas are the only ones who know.  
  
They have their own victory celebration a few weeks later, once her nose clears up and everyone else's assorted injuries are mostly healed. Wrex begins the festivities by clearing the bar of its patrons; she expects him to start throwing tables, but instead he throws his arms wide and announces, “Ten thousand credits a head to whoever clears the paparazzi out of the Ward.”  
  
The ensuing stampede for the door nearly knocks Joker off his crutches, and a hastily drawn gun snags on Tali’s suit.  But there’s no tear, just an empty bar and Shepard saying, “I don’t think we should get them _killed_.”  
  
Wrex shrugs.  “If they run, they’ll survive,” he says, and proceeds to greet the rest of them with hearty slaps to whichever body part still hurts the most, though she gets more of a deliberate side slam than a slap.  He and Garrus end up in an argument over the merits of headplates versus fringe while Liara and Shepard have the biotic equivalent of an arm-wrestling match and Joker tries to convince the others to place bets.  Tali drinks—too much, probably, given that she's never really drunk before, but who knows how long it will be before she gets to drink again and anyway, it turns out that triple-filtered turian brandy tastes _really damn good_.  
  
"Of course we have the best alcohol," Garrus says.  
  
"No," Tali corrects him, "you have the _only_  alcohol."  
  
"That you can drink," Wrex says.  
  
"Precisely," Tali says, slurring the word, giggling that she can't speak precisely at all, _ha_.  "Why...would I care about any of the others?"  
  
"Fair point," Kaidan says.  He's mostly quiet; his eyes are mostly on Shepard.  
  
Shepard, whose gravity field suddenly swallows Liara's, knocking over half the drinks on the table—"Whoa there, Commander," Joker says.  
  
"Just Shepard," she says, " _ugh_ ," as the volus bartender comes over shouting something about biotics and destruction of property.  
  
"Aw, Fenn," Wrex says, "you've never cared _before_."  
  
The volus inhales.  "That glass is going on your tab, Urdnot Wrex," he says, and then his suit hisses again.  "And you're a hero now, so I know you can pay it."  
  
"This might come as a shock, but there's no credit bonus for saving the galaxy," Kaidan says.  
  
"Then _get out_ ," the volus says.  
  
Laughing, they spill out into the ward, onto a byway that's filled with menacing bounty hunters and nary a press person in sight--and _that's_  something the quarians definitely don't have, at least not in the Fleet.  It'd be far too much trouble to try to hop ship to follow someone famous around, and for the people who stay still, well, even on the liveships it's not _hard_ , exactly, to notice someone is following you.  Certainly no one's going to be following _her_  around, once she goes home. And if they try, she'll deck them.  
  
The Citadel never sleeps, also like the Fleet, but there's so many more lights and colors and sounds and different kinds of people and _smells_ , mostly bad but some _so good_ , and they laugh and stumble their way down the byway, Wrex boisterous but with a steady hand on her elbow—"Careful kid," he says, steering her away from an unidentifiable pile of wreckage—hey, maybe she should salvage some of it, take it back to the Fleet, bits of the Citadel are sure to be—and then the universe is a bit up-and-down all at once and there's a railing and she stops and leans and _looks_ —  
  
She can see the other arms of the Citadel, fiercely radiant even with the giant dark spots delineating areas of harm, and the Serpent Nebula beyond, glittering with dust and glowing with newborn stars, and her hands grip the railing as Wrex steadies her and she sighs, long and hard.  
  
Shepard comes to the railing next to her, Kaidan on her other side.  "See anything you like?"  
  
"It's amazing," she says, and she's drunk and crying a little and quarian tears burn against the skin, hot and salty and a little acidic.  "I'm going to miss it all—everything—so much."  
  
"It's a shame you have to go back," Liara says, somehow squeezing past Wrex to lean against the railing.  
  
"Shame?" she says, shocked and offended and too drunk to take a swing at her.  "After all I've learned?  I have so much to offer the Fleet—everything we've learned about the geth alone—"  
  
"But you'll miss it," Shepard says, "being out here."  
  
"Able to do whatever you want," Garrus adds, his hands dangling over the railing, head tilted up.  
  
"Not having to live up to anybody," Wrex rumbles, and she laughs and a few tears land on her tongue and they're not as tasty as turian brandy and now she's on the verge of crying a _lot_.  
  
"Taking potshots at geth," she says, to make herself laugh, but she won't even be able to carry her shotgun on her new ship and her heart sinks again.  She wants to go _home_ ; she wishes home felt like dirt under her boots.  "But, you know, all my things are there.  And they're," she sighs heavily, "counting on me."  
  
"You've made them proud," Shepard says, and the weight of the burden lifts, a little.  
  
"Thank you," she says, tilting her head back like Garrus.  "It's just all so..."  
  
"Beautiful," Kaidan says, and Tali tilts her head enough to see that he's still looking at Shepard, that his hand is resting on her hand, and she grips the railing and wonders what it would feel like against her skin and wishing she didn't know enough to wonder.   _Keelah se'lai_.  
  
"Yeah, well," Joker says, "now we just got to figure out how to keep the Reapers from destroying it all."  
  
"Thank you, Joker," Liara says, delicate and disturbed.  
  
"Winning always feels a little like losing," Shepard says, sighing herself.  
  
"That just means you've never really won," Wrex says.  
  
"Oh?  So what's it like?"  
  
"I'll let you know if I ever find out," he says, and Tali laughs, hiccupping, and now her nose is running _again_ , and no one has ever come up with an efficient way to handle that in the suits, not in three hundred years, and maybe _that's_  what she should have found on her Pilgrimage.  Probably wouldn't have gotten anyone killed.  Too late now.  
  
"Nevertheless," Shepard says, and then she's silent; and as the rest of them wait out her silence Tali thinks she's unconscious of their waiting, still unaware that she's their commander in more than just name or rank, and she drunkenly loves that about her, admires it, hopes to be half the woman she is one day.  "Thank you all.  For everything."  
  
Thank _you_ , Tali wants to say, but what comes out instead, delicate and deliberate and drunk, is, "You're...welcome."  
  
Shepard laughs again and then she's gone from her side, Kaidan tugging her towards him, and this close she can feel the rumble of Wrex's laugh in her own chest as he puts a hand to her shoulder and gives her a little shake.  And then he's gone too, and for a moment it's just her and the view, a million billion stars and a girl who's spent her life traveling amongst them, and somewhere out there is home, too.  
  
She's not sure she's learned what she's supposed to, not sure her father will be grateful that the humans took her in, not sure anyone at home will believe what she's seen, thinks she's maybe come away with the wrong lessons; she hopes she'll still be able to serve her people well.  Aboard the _Rayya_ , she knew who she was; here, she's part of Shepard's team; and now...  
  
She'll have to choose a new ship.  
  
Her father will have suggestions.  But then again, she just might ignore him.  
  
(Then again, she certainly won't.)  
  
_vas Normandy_  sounds less strange, now, but still impossible; and she's crying again, listening to her crewmates laughing and celebrating, and already missing the ship she's come to call her own; but the Fleet is out there, waiting for her, and it's a call she can't ignore.  
  
But for now...  
  
She takes one last look at the stars, sniffs as hard as she can in a futile attempt to keep her face clean, and turns back to her friends, and grins through her tears, though none of them can see it.  It doesn't matter; for now, she's _here_ , and home is really just a state of mind.

 

**fin.**

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

  
**epilogue.**  
  
She's barely been aboard the _Neema_  a week when her father summons her to the _Alarei_ , an older, smaller ship, a transport with plenty of cargo space, not assigned to anything other than hauling quarians around the galaxy.  Why he's there, she doesn't know, and he doesn't say.  As usual, he's only interested in running her life and making her choices for her.  
  
"You know you did well, bringing that data about the geth to us," he says.  "But there are still more geth out there, and we need more data."  
  
"How do you propose we obtain it?" she asks, monotonous, looking around the small quarters, wondering why in space the head of the Admiralty Board is _here_.  
  
He doesn't answer directly, either.  "We have...strike teams," he says.  "Missions.  Small ships we send away from the Fleet for supplies we can't mine or barter for in our current space.  You will be assigned to one. And if in your travels you come across...well," he says, inclining his head.  It's not a nod; she can't imagine her father nodding, but she catches herself doing it anyway.  And then she shakes her head, which is even more cumbersome than nodding and equally as ineffective.  
  
"Admiral Gerrel has me—"  
  
"I've spoke with Han'Gerrel," her father interrupts.  "He can spare you from time to time."  
  
She wants to argue, wants to stand up for herself, wants to share with him all she's learned; part of her would like nothing more than to take the butt of her shotgun to his abdomen, but a larger part simply aches with loneliness, wishes for Mandira from Engineering, or Kaidan, or Wrex.  Wrex would tell her to tell her father to take a hike out the airlock ("he'd survive, he's wearing a suit!").    
  
But the largest part of her can't wait to leave the Fleet again, and this is the greatest guilt and pleasure of all. "Very well," she says.  "When do I start?"  
  
"In a fortnight," he says.  "For now, return to the _Neema_ and attend to your duties. When it's time, you'll meet the rest of your team.  They are expendable, Tali'Zorah," he says, and his eyes are steady and unblinking behind his visor.  "You are not.  Remember that."  
  
_Love you too, Father_ , she wants to say, bitter and annoyed; but she wants to travel, and in the end, obedience is in her blood.  "Understood," she says instead, and he twists his wrist in affirmation and turns to inspect one of the many displays that clutter his tiny desk, and that's that.  
  
She returns to the _Neema_ , meets her crewmates, tinkers on a few trinkets she brought back from her travels, unable to commit to anything, already thinking ahead.  She was so homesick; she can't wait to leave.  
  
She meets her team, a pair of fellow techs and then a couple squads of marines, and this _is_  going to be dangerous, and she finds the thought...exciting.  And maybe, in her travels, perhaps she’ll come across—that is to say, surely the Alliance will be keeping tabs on geth activity, maybe there's a chance—  
  
And then, as she packs away her few belongings on the _Neema_ , as she lovingly fits the pieces of her shotgun together, there's a notification at her station, a brief message; a courtesy note, no images, no voices, just words alone— _Alchera_ , _unknown enemy combatant_ , _escape pods_ , _destroyed_ —and then—  
  
just like that—  
  
the _Normandy_  is—  
  
  
  
_gone_.


End file.
